Master Vim Syntax Highlighting: From Basics to Custom Color Schemes

Modern IDEs use colorful syntax highlighting, but Vim defaults to a plain black‑and‑white display. This article shows how to enhance Vim with rich highlighting and custom color schemes.

Installing Vim

Check if Vim is installed; on Ubuntu you can install it with: $ sudo apt-get install vim Verify the installation:

$ vim --version

Creating a Sample Script

Example login.sh bash script:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Type your username"
read username

echo "Type your password"
read password

if [[ $username == "admin" && $password == "secret" ]]; then
  echo "Authorized user"
else
  echo "Unauthorized user"
fi

Open it in Vim:

$ vim login.sh

Enable/Disable Syntax Highlighting

After pressing ESC, type: :syntax on to enable, or: :syntax off to disable.

Permanent Syntax Highlighting

Edit your ~/.vimrc file and add:

syntax on
set background=dark

Save and quit with :wq. This makes highlighting persistent across sessions.

Changing Color Scheme

Vim stores color scheme files in /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors/. List them with:

$ ls -l /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors/

Apply a scheme, e.g., morning:

:colorscheme morning

Language‑Specific Highlighting

Open a file (e.g., average.py) and change its syntax to Perl with:

:set syntax=perl

Customizing Highlight Groups

Vim defines several highlight groups. You can change their colors, for example making statements red:

:hi Statement ctermfg=red

Identifier : variables

Statement : keywords such as if, else, while Comment : comments

Type : data types like int, double, string PreProc : preprocessor directives (e.g., #include)

Constant : constants such as numbers, quoted strings, true/false

Special : special symbols like \t, \n Underlined : underlined text

Error : error highlights